February 28, 2015

“Jews have been murdered again on European soil only because they were Jews,” Mr. Netanyahu said Sunday in Jerusalem. “Of course, Jews deserve protection in every country, but we say to Jews, to our brothers and sisters: Israel is your home,” he added.

It is unlikely that many Jews living in Germany will heed Netanyahu's call. On the contrary, young Israelis are today moving to Berlin in droves. It is hard to imagine what the Federal Republic of Germany would be today without the contribution of Jews. And it is astonishing that so many Jews who were forced to flee Germany for their lives, whose families were murdered by Germans, chose to return to Germany in order to help create a modern democracy. Mischa Brumlik, writing in Die Tageszeitung, reminds of us these incredibly brave souls who contributed so much to every aspect of German society in the early days of the Bundesrepulik.

Mischa Brumlik pays tribute to many more Jewish thinkers, scientists and politicians in the article.

Understandably, for some Jewish intellectuals, the thought of returning to Germany after the war was too traumatic. The German-born poet Nelly Sachs, who received the Nobel Prize for Literature, would never return, and had a nervous breakdown when she accepted a prize in Switzerland and heard German spoken.

Recently, I wrote about the poet Mascha Kaléko, who, after the war, moved to Jerusalem rather than returning to Germany. She never felt at home in Israel, and died homesick for her beloved Berlin.

What kind of system would they like to see? Nearly half believe that "Communism/Socialism" would be preferable to the evil capitalism - even though the attempts to implement communism have up to now been flawed. Nostalgia for the old Arbeiter-und-Bauern-Staat? Yes, things were better in the old GDR, even though the Stasi made some mistakes now and then.

Given the prevailing anti-Americanism in Germany and the sympathy with Putin's Russia, it is not surprising that many Germans see the United States - the embodiment of market capitalism - as the greatest threat to world peace (along with Israel, naturally). After all, the US engineered the "fascist coup" in Kiev and has been sending tanks and troops into the Ukraine, threatening Russia's "legitimate sphere of influence", and undermining Vladimir Putin's heroic efforts to maintain peace in the region.

(One third of the respondents believe that capitalism leads inexorably to poverty, hunger and war. One fifth even see the danger of a "new fascism" looming.)

For champions of personal liberty, this finding was especially disturbing: 42% of Germans believe : "Die soziale Gleichheit aller Menschen ist wichtiger als die Freiheit des Einzelnen." (the social equality of all people is more important than individual freedom.)

Does this mean that Germans will gladly give up their luxury goods as part of a grand Maoist Cultural Revolution? Not likely. Hating dirty capitalism while enjoying its fruits is part of the psychological makeup.

Actually it was another Vladimir - Vladimir Lenin, also idolized by the German Left - who best understood the German character. When asked when the great proletarian revolution would come to Germany, Lenin scoffed:

February 18, 2015

Recently, we marked the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp. Unfortunately, however, the Holocaust didn't end the the January 1945 liberation. The mass murder of Jews continued on, even though the fate of the Third Reich was certain with the rapid advance of the Soviet Red Army.

For three decades, Arno Surminski has chronicled the fate of Germans who were forced to flee his beloved East Prussia. In 2008 Surminski turned his attention to the Holocaust. Die Vogelwelt von Auschwitz, a novella based on a true event, examines the Holocaust from the Polish perspective. With his 2010 novel Winter Fünfundvierzig oder die Frauen von Palmnicken Suminski brings the Holocaust home to his native East Prussia. This novel is also based on a real historical event: the massacre of more than 3,000 (mostly female) Jews on the beach of Palmnicken (today Jantarnyi, part of Russia).

Winter 1945 is structured as a "frame novel": in 1998 Max Broders is mourning the death of his father when he encounters a former officer of the Waffen SS who knew Hans Broders, Max's father. The man informs Max that his father "shouldn't be blamed" for what happened in Palmnicken in January 1945. Max has no idea what this means; his father never spoke about his time as a 21-year old soldier. So Max travels to Kaliningrad to try to uncover the truth about his father. The action then shifts to the final months of the war as Surminksi follows the fate of 6 women: Lisa Kretschmann is forced to flee the advancing Red Army with her children, as is the widow Levine Gedeitis with her daughter Olga, who plays a key role in the novel. But at the center of WInter1945 is the fate of four young Jewish women who were working as slave laborers at a concentration camp in Lodz. We follow these women on their death march across the frozen landscape until they reach the beach of Palmnicken. During the night of January 31, 1945 the 3,000 women were killed by the SS, their bodies thrown into the freezing Baltic Sea. Miraculously, one of the novel's characters survives, just as in the actual massacre 13 women somehow escaped death.

Max Broders keeps running into brick walls as he investigates the massacre - and his father's involvement. There were virtually no records of the events of the night of January 31, 1945, and the Russian officials denied that even had been a massacre of Jews. The Red Army had recovered some of the bodies and reburied them as "anti-Fascist martyrs." In general, they are baffled by Broders' obsession with the past:

(You Germans are incredible people: first you plunge the world into misery, then you want to make everything better. Don't you see how history keeps repeating itself? Here there are massacres, there you have death marches. That's just how people are - we'll never change them.)

As a footnote to Winter 1945, I should point out that my good friend Gunter Nitsch was instrumental in bringing the Palmnicken massacre to light. In his memoir, Weeds Like Us, Nitsch recalls how his grandfather was forced by the Soviet occupiers to dig up the bodies of women on the beach. The horrible experience broke the man's spirit and he died shortly after this. The German version of Weeds Like Us - Eine lange Flucht aus Ostpreussen - contains a lengthy introduction by Arno Surminski.

February 12, 2015

A smiling Vladimir Putin was triumphant in Minsk as he announced to the world the "peace agreement" he had negotiated with Angela Merkel and her colleagues from France and the Ukraine. Long forgotten are the victims of MH17 and Putin could boast about a Russian-made "Peace For Our Time", while Merkel gibt den Chamberlain:

("The government used to tell us it was defending our freedom in Afghanistan. German soldiers were deployed beyond the mountains there and lost their lives. However now that the threat has moved a lot closer to home, there is to be no talk of this kind of defensive readiness. It seems it's far preferable to appease the aggressor with territorial gains that don't cost us a thing. This may be a sensible approach in the short term, but it is also shameless. Those who use it, who reach out their hand, should stop citing European values in doing so. Hypocrisy doesn't solve any problems. This is no way to resolve the conflict - it will keep growing. Merkel and her team are dancing on a powder keg, and Putin is holding the fuse.")

February 07, 2015

Erich Fromm, the great German-born psychoanalyst and social theorist, died in 1980, long before Vladimir Putin emerged on the world stage. But Fromm's insights into totalitarian societies and the authoritarian personality are helpful in understanding Russia and its leader today.

On Russian support for Vladimir Putin's crackdown on political freedom and the Anschluss of Crimea (From Escape from Freedom, 1941):

"Times of emergency (which is most times) demands careful thought, natural expression and freedom to think and act. Yet, at these moments, freedom becomes limited. A tendency to autocratic control of expression, followed by an almost sadistic need to inflict damage upon others and a masochistic urge to allow damage to be inflicted on the self, often occur. Destructiveness of home life and foreign populations by military adventures are easily accepted by a public that automatically conforms."

On Putin's proxy war against the West (substitute the Putin for Hitler, and the "West" for the Weimar Republic and Great Britain):

"The love for the powerful and the hatred for the powerless which is so typical for the sado-masochistic character explains a great deal of Hitler's and his followers' political actions. While the Republican government thought they could "appease" the Nazis by treating them leniently they not only failed to appease them them but aroused their hatred by the very lack of power and firmness they showed. Hitler hated the Weimar Republic because it was weak. [...]One might even venture to assume that Hitler's attitude toward Great Britain was determined, among other factors, by this psychological complex. As long as he felt Britain to be powerful, he loved and admired her. When he recognized the weakness of the British position before and after Munich his love changed to hatred and the wish to destroy it. From this viewpoint "appeasement" was a policy which for a personality like Hitler was bound to arouse hatred, not friendship."

This is why the latest push by Angela Merkel and Francois Holland to find a diplomatic solution to the crisis in Ukraine cannot succeed: Putin realizes they are negotiating from a position of weakness. Putin will smile and agree to any "peace plan" while he continues to redraw the borders in Europe - creating a corridor from Russia to his "sacred" Crimea. Meanwhile the cries for "appeasement" in Europe grow louder.

February 02, 2015

As a long-time New Englander, I'm a big fan of the New England Patriots football team. Usually there's not much connection between Germany and the Super Bowl. But this year the Patriots team features a starting right tackle - Sebastian Vollmer - who also happens to be a German national:

The 30-year-old began his unlikely path to New England when he took up the game as a teenager in Dusseldorf, Germany. And it was watching quarterback Tom Brady, the man who he is now charged with protecting, lead the Patriots to their first Super Bowl title which helped fuel the fire of a journey which first took him to Houston and then to the professional ranks.

Asked if he had advice for any aspiring American football players in Germany, he said: “I did that 13 years ago. I watched the 2002 Super Bowl with the Patriots and I’m here now. If that’s your goal, keep at it, it might work.”

Vollmer attracted plenty of attention on media day on Tuesday compared with many of his team-mates as he fielded questions from the German journalist contingent. Despite that, the 6ft 8ins, 320lb offensive lineman does not feel like an ambassador for the country or continent of his birth.

“I don’t see myself any differently to any other player,” he added. “Just knowing what a great experience it has been for me, I would like some other German kid to go through that just because it’s been amazing. Whatever I can do, I will do, but, other than that, I just see myself like any other offensive lineman.”